<p>LOL, mamom! My boy wouldn’t look at the South or Midwest at all–there were some great schools that met all his criteria there, but he just wouldn’t, so what can you do? My kid is going to college on either coast or bust.</p>
<p>We live in Dallas and D ruled out not only Texas but the entire south. Fine with me…you’ve got to narrow down the choices somehow.</p>
<p>My D won’t go South or East or West either for that matter, unless they have a “North-” in front of them. She’s a cold-weather, snow, loves-winter person. Me, too. Go figure.</p>
<p>Amandak, you make me feel like a total wimp! Kayaking in marshcountry and skating??? Wow…on a good day I feel pretty pleased with myself if I get in a walk or haul a few wheelbarrows full of mulch around the yard. You’re my hero!</p>
<p>My son is also only interested in East Coast or California. We did manage to include Duke (not really a Southern school) and Northwestern on the list, but they are fairly low down in interest… Our list is very long as it is, and except for Rice and UChicago which I would have included if I could have convinced him, I think he is probably right that the atmosphere wouldn’t be what he is looking for.</p>
<p>mosb: congratulations especially on the lovely additional evidence of having a wonderful daughter. :)</p>
<p>arisamp: congrats to your D! I trotted over to the acceptances thread to learn where she’s in. Who dat? :)</p>
<p>amandakayak: huzzah on having the safety bagged!</p>
<p>fogfog: good news is always great to have. </p>
<p>It’s so nice to start out just with acceptances on this thread. At least for another month and a half. </p>
<p>D1 is in a lull after getting the 1 ED and 1 EA in. I’m nagging her to get the UC application finished. It’ll be easy. The essays are written. She is not biting. Last night she stayed up too late reading political blogs and tracking the house and senate races. I wonder where she’ll be registering to vote next year? </p>
<p>FlMathMom, I wondered why UMCP took their time sending out that letter to the NMSFs. It arrived two days before the Nov 1 EA deadline, not much time to pull together an application. At first I thought it was just confirmation that D1 didn’t need to pay the app fee, because she’d already submitted her app.</p>
<p>My son originally didn’t want to look at colleges in the South but when I pointed out that they were generally less expensive and that the ones I thought would fit had a very high percentage of OOS students, he changed his tune. He has applied to three Colleges in the South. I’m all for narrowing but I’d rather do that after the financial aid offers come in. 
I’m clearing our April weekends for accepted student visits…</p>
<p>Narrowing down the choices is pretty easy when the criteria are: 1) Must have nuclear reactor on campus and 2) must not be south. That eliminated Texas A&M and Georgia Tech for our son. He just can’t see himself in the south or southwest. Not even a trip to Atlanta for fun to check out Tech would entice him.</p>
<p>Yesterday, he got a call from a small, Nazerene college one state away. He wasn’t home so I fielded the call. They were willing to offer him “a nearly full ride” based on his SAT scores. When I mentioned that he was only interested in nuclear physics or nuclear engineering, she said: “Let me see if we offer that.” Really? It’s a tiny place. I would think the admissions caller would know right away that nuclear anything wasn’t on their radar.</p>
<p>Anyway, is anyone else’s student doing IB Group Experiments this week. His IB Physics class is spending the whole day at a local conservation area building experiments. Good thing it is beautiful weather for building a trebuchet!</p>
<p>olderwiserwoman - I guess he’s aware that Reed has a student-run nuclear reactor (those kids get certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission…wow!).</p>
<p>all - It is fascinating to hear about huge parts of the country being lopped off lists! We’re in Texas, and apart from UT and Rice, all other schools in the south are banned! And I can relate to the fear of earthquakes in California…both of my kids felt that way after they took geology! But this 2011 kid has decided to throw caution to the wind and put in a couple of CA apps.</p>
<p>Congrats to everyone with decisions! The best thing that happened in our house this week was simply submitting that first app. Sigh. Never mind that it was 11 something PM on Nov. 1…it was a victory I’ll take!</p>
<p>TXArtemis: yes, Reed is on our original spreadsheet, but the culture there is not a good fit. We’re a pretty conservative, Christian family. And he doesn’t care to go to a school that is smaller than his high school. Our HS does have one graduate at Reed, however. Only about 10 people in town had ever heard of it before he went there. Son of an attorney and a university professor. A really gifted student but with a much different personality that our son.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your input re: Rice. We really liked what we saw of Houston. It is nice having a campus school in a city. My S applied to schools in MA, GA, CA, TX & FL. Most are very small to small except state flagship. All had to to have a good size Jewish and non-white population (most of his current friends are Asian or Indian) and very strong engineering/computer science dept. No schools that had a big frat/sorority culture or where kids wore preppy clothes (ruled out Vandy) made the list. Distance, weather, earthquakes not a factor for him. We’d prefer a non-stop flight away.</p>
<p>Congrats to fogfog, arisamp, amandak.</p>
<p>Olderwiser - My S is in IB Physics. What is IB Group Experiments?</p>
<p>OWM, I think your son would hate Reed. Even my hippy, dippy niece was put off. Said the kids were very weird. She ended up at Colo College and loved it.</p>
<p>Olderwisermom, that nuclear reactor requirement still cracks me up. I mean, I get it, I think it’s an amazing interest your son has…it just sounds so funny to talk about in terms of “things my kid needs on a campus.”</p>
<p>Regarding Reed’s student-run nuclear reactor…anybody else feel a little nervous seeing those four words in the same sentence? :)</p>
<p>FlMathMom: IB Physics SL or HL? (is there an HL? This is SL.) All I know is there are only two students in the class, plus 10 others taking AP Physics in the same room at the same time. The two IB students had to come up with experiments to build today and supervise the other students in them. It’s listed as “Group 4 Project” on our IB calendar. I’ll let you know if I get any more info after it’s over. We started school on August 16, so we may be ahead of you in the curriculum by a few weeks.</p>
<p>emilybee: Most of what we know about Reed came from reading “Blue Like Jazz,” by Don Miller. So, it never was in consideration, despite the nuclear reactor.</p>
<p>Ok, unless I’m mistaken, we haven’t heard from Emmybet in a few days.</p>
<p>Oh, Lord, I bet she has that poor girl barricaded in her room with the computer, bread and water, and Emmy at the door saying, "I’m not kidding around anymore. You want out? You want dinner? You want to live to see the sunrise??? LET ME SEE AN ESSAY!!!</p>
<p>^That was hilarious. That would be something my mom would do if I slacked off on my apps.</p>
<p>momsof, I actually love that idea! Having similar issues with my D. She thankfully got in the EA app on time (a non-common app app mind you), but has writer’s block on the common app essay. She keeps wanting to talk to me about adjustments to her “list”. I tell her “FIRST, get that blankety blank common app essay finished, THEN we can talk about the list. What good is the list if the most essential element isn’t complete?”</p>
<p>Aargh! I can’t wait to have my evenings and weekends back!</p>
<p>OWM - HL. S started at same time. I’ll ask him when he gets home.</p>
<p>
SlitheyTove, that’s awesome that your D was so interested in Election Day results. Does she have an interest in political science, public affairs, or related areas? My D came to watch me vote, as she did in 2010 because she “wants to be ready” when she turns 18 next year.</p>
<p>MOSB: Here’s the list of research reactors on campuses (and other institutions). If you check out the size, he is accepted already at campus with the largest and has applied EA to the campus with the second largest. Also applied to a smaller one because we were impressed with their first-year engineering program and facilities.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_reactors]List”>Lists of nuclear reactors - Wikipedia]List</a> of nuclear reactors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia<a href=“Scroll%20down%20to%20United%20States%20Civilian%20Research%20and%20Test%20Reactors%20Licensed%20To%20Operate”>/url</a></p>
<p>I probably should add another caveat: he didn’t want to apply to any schools in the same conference as our state flagship (and three of them are on that list). In his e-mail today, five e-mails from four of them. All of them offer big NM $$ and Honors College perks, but he is fiercely loyal to my alma mater.</p>
<p>RenaissanceMom, fraternities are an important part of Dartmouth culture. Sororities not so much, I think. My son loved Dartmouth – it was his first choice before Admitted Students Weekend. The kids he met were interesting, really friendly and loved Dartmouth beyond belief. He thought the frat thing was manageable, although I had a sense that the social life did revolve a lot around frats and sports teams. But, the kids were very bright and serious about academics so the culture probably is balanced enough for me. He did wonder whether the kids were bright and hard-working and enthusiastic but maybe not as intellectual as other places, but he generally was impressed.</p>
<p>The new president was an inspired choice. Out of the box, especially for Dartmouth. I was speaking with one of the trustees and he has strong support. The choice was one that made me say, “Wow, this isn’t the Dartmouth I remember.” It signalled to me that Dartmouth was serious about strengthening its stature substantially. The trustee said, indeed that the school is planning more things that will turn heads. So, despite the frats, I’m pretty bullish on Dartmouth. But, they will be a large part of the social scene. </p>
<p>mamom, it does make it easy. ShawD first said, nothing in Massachusetts, and then only in Canada.</p>